Discovering the darkest corners of the musical universe since 2001.

October 14th saw the release of “Live At The Curse”, the seventh long-player from underground band Zapoppin’. The album appears courtesy of Last Shop Recs, Damnsonic, and Cassette Store Day 2017 – for whom the limited edition tape was sent to partaking stores.

Live At The Curse was recorded during spring 2016 while Zapoppin’ – now performing as a stripped down ‘electrick’ organ and drums duo – toured the UK. It features early performances of brand new cuts ‘Look It Up In A Book’ (detailing the arcane extremes one must go to for love) and ‘Theme From A Spelling Bee’ (a sort of new wave jazz instrumental to appeal to TV programmers).

The resulting record is a document of Zapoppin’ at their most energetic and liberated. 10 tracks zoom by in around 30 minutes leaving the audience by turns confused and exhilarated as the band veer from punkish guitar-less garage to vibrato-led end-of-the-pier ballads. While the line-up and instrumentation may differ significantly from the anti-folk Zapoppin’ of old, the group have found their feet as this new edition of the band with considerable ease. Always different, always the same.

Deep in a San Francisco basement, lost in time and space and long-forgotten by their masters, lay over a hundred tattered boxes dating back to the early 1970s. Buried beneath layers of dust and rubble, these cardboard coffins had all but given up on ever being called into active service… Until now.

Containing master tapes, demos, curios and acres of unreleased material, these time-capsules were recently rediscovered by their creators – The Residents – who, contemplating their own existence for the first time in decades, had begun to wonder just who they were, and what they’d done with their lives. Torches were taken up, a base camp established, and the eyeball enigmas went to work.

‘The Residents pREServed’ proudly presents the results of those long, uncertain months spent exhuming their own pasts – a series of archival, deep excavation Residents reissues. Beginning at the beginning – with ‘Meet The Residents’ and ‘The Third Reich N Roll’ released in January 2018 – and working chronologically through the mire, these long-awaited sets will include newly remastered albums and singles, live recordings, alternate versions and, of course, as much long-lost and unreleased material as The Residents’ can bear to part with.

Accompanied by in-the-know essays by established experts from both sides of the Atlantic and detailed sleevenotes from The Residents’ mysterious archivist, each set will explore and contextualise its parent album – from conception to recording and on into its place in the ever evolving world of the legendary, unpredictable and much-loved quartet.

Acclaimed filmmaker Alex Winter is turning to fans to help make the first definitive documentary about the life of iconoclastic musician, artist, and revolutionary Frank Zappa. But Winter’s real goal is far more ambitious: This morning, he launched a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter not only to fund the film, but to catalog and preserve Frank’s at-risk archives, known as “The Vault.” Kickstarter backers of Who the F*@% Is Frank Zappa? will have a hand in planting a flag for Zappa as a 20th Century cultural icon and a front row seat as Winter explores the never-before-seen archives.

Winter and Glen Zipper (producer of the Academy Award® winning Undefeated) are the very first people outside the Zappa family to be given access to The Vault, a vast repository of never-released media (video, film, unreleased music, interviews, concert recordings, and more) from and by Frank, which has literally been locked away in a chamber beneath the Zappa family’s Hollywood Hills home since Frank’s death. Before her passing, the notoriously discerning Gail Zappa granted the team unprecedented access to Frank’s life and archives, and said, “We couldn’t be happier to be working with Alex, an extraordinary filmmaker in his own right. With an advanced degree in perfect timing and a shared respect for conceptual continuity, we feel it is our duty.”

The Kickstarter campaign’s minimum goal of $500,000 is enough to digitize the critical parts of the archive and start production, but surpassing the goal promises faster completion of the film, plus more fan access to Vault contents, with “stretch goal” milestones up to $3 Million unlocking more new releases, and a hardcover companion book of unseen letters, photos, compositions and more from Frank’s visual archives. “The more we raise, the more we can save,” says Winter, “which means more material and new recordings to share with the world.”

Backers can claim rewards such as a screen credit on the finished documentary, a visit to the Vault, an opportunity to play one of Frank’s original guitars, or even — for a big enough contribution — Frank Zappa’s house. That’s right, for a cool $9 million pledge on eBay, one superfan can have the ultimate reward: Full ownership of the 8,000-square-foot Zappa family estate, along with an Executive Producer credit on the documentary and a slew of other Zappa rewards.

Winter describes the film as “an epic saga of a great American artist and thinker; a major film event worthy of the scope of Zappa’s prodigious and varied creative output, and the breadth of his personal and political life.”

“We’re private people, but we want the story to be told,” said Ahmet Zappa, Co-Trustee of the Zappa Family Trust and CEO, Zappa Records, of the documentary. “We are so happy Alex is taking it on.”

Over the past 10 years, Gorowski has released four albums on our netlabel WM Recordings. His music is described as “electronically diverse” and has been used in various compilations and videos. In 2007 one of his albums was voted into the Top 5 Netlabel Releases for that year by Phlow Magazine.

This new release is a little special. It is a collection of all the tracks made by Gorowski over the last decade, but never released. It includes pieces from each period when the other albums were made, and some brand new tracks thrown in for good measure! They have all been carefully selected, rejigged and remastered for your ear time pleasure.

Gail Zappa, nee Adelaide Gail Sloatman, age 70, departed this earth peacefully at her home on Wednesday, October 7, 2015, surrounded by her children.

Married to Frank Zappa at age 22, Gail was a doe-eyed, barefooted trailblazer, giving equal value to her domestic and professional responsibilities as matriarch of the family and overseer of all Zappa enterprises. She devoted herself to partnering with her husband in the music business and raising their children, Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva.

Gail enthusiastically executed her role as guardian of her husband’s creative life and, with his passing, strove to ensure his legacy as one of the leading American composers and musicians of the 20th century. In this and all business endeavors, Gail passionately advocated to establish clear definitions of intellectual property and copyright laws on behalf of not just her husband, but all artists. While she conducted intricate legal negotiations with corporations as grand dame of the Zappa Family Trust, she never failed to impart the sense of humor that was part and parcel of her indomitable and formidable personality. Gail, self-described as a pagan absurdist, was motivated by love in all aspects of her life, kept her authenticity intact, unbowed and, simply put, was one bad ass in the music business and political world.

Gail will forever be identified as a key figure in the creative renaissance that is Laurel Canyon. But more than any singular accomplishment, she defined herself in her personal relationships, happiest when surrounded by loved ones and artists, often one in the same. The memories she leaves behind are indeed her own art form. Her searing intelligence, unforgettable smile, wild thicket of hair and trailing black velvets leave a blur in her wake.

There is no further information to report. This is the only statement that will be released by the family.

Soul Jazz Records have announced the release on a new Studio One compilation: “Studio One Jump-Up“, featuring killer tracks by The Skatalites, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Derrick Morgan, Lord Creator, The Maytals,
Lester Sterling, Count Ossie and more.

Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd first began recording music in the late 1950s, making one-off records to play on his Downbeat Sound System. These ‘exclusive dup-plates’ enabled him to reign supreme in the regular dancehall soundclashes of Kingston, fighting off the competition from rivals including Duke Reid the Trojan and Prince Buster. This new album traces the roots of the legendary label as it created the sound of the young independent Jamaican nation going into the early 1960s.

Sir Coxsone used only the finest musicians in Jamaica for these recordings, including players that would later become known worldwide as the Skatalites: Don Drummond, Roland Alphonso, Ernest Ranglin, Rico Rodriguez, Cluett Johnson and others. As fans clamoured to get a copy of these ‘one-off’ exclusive records, Clement Dodd eventually decided to start making them available commercially starting in 1959, and so began the birth of an empire.

Kim Fowley, the eccentric music producer and Svengali who created and managed the all-female rock group the Runaways in the 1970s and worked with everyone from Frank Zappa to KISS, died Thursday after a long battle with bladder cancer. He was 75.

Fowley was at least as colorful as any of the musicians he worked with going back to the 1960s in L.A., where a vibrant rock music scene attracted many of the most creative and most idiosyncratic characters imaginable.

Fowley, born July 21, 1939, in Los Angeles to actor-parents Douglas Fowley and Shelby Payne, scored his first chart success producing the 1960 single “Cherry Pie” for Gary Paxton and Skip Battin, aka Skip & Flip. Fowley continued working with Paxton when they created the Hollywood Argyles band, which charted a No. 1 hit, also in 1960, with the song “Alley Oop.”

He went on to write or produce songs for a range of musicians including the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Gene Vincent, Helen Reddy and Warren Zevon. He also recorded a string of solo albums under his own name.

“We are a three piece that pretends to be faceless aliens who have to go planet to planet to avoid another alien race that Bio engineer space creature like the “Lazertüth” and in the process the faces of the creatures on the planets because we get high off of them.”

Graig and Larry Nybo are lifelong fans of Space Age Pop-maestro Esquivel. They discovered his music as kids when their mom brought home a box of Lps from a garage sale. They spun his records until the grooves wore off, choreographing dances, acting out scenarios with action figures.

Putting together a show playing Esquivel’s music was a dream which recently came true at the Gangrene Film Festival. Here’s a video from the very first performance by Sparkling Planet, playing the music of Juan Garcia Esquivel:

Chicago based Lowdown Brass Band will release a new album, “Lowdown Sounds”, on September 19.

Featuring a line-up of sousaphone, trumpets, trombones, saxophones and percussion, Lowdown Brass Band utilizes the classic instrumentation of traditional southern brass bands. By adding modern influences of soul, funk, R&B, reggae and hip hop, Lowdown Brass Band creates an exciting synthesis of the old and the new- even recruiting R&B legend Roy Ayers to sing on their version of ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine.’

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